Social Networks Make You Fat and Happy

Social networks can make you fat and happy.

That's not an opinion, that's a fact revealed by medical data collected over the past 50 years.

Simply put, our friends heavily influence our habits and happiness, from our weight to smoking (and quitting) and our overall joy.

All these things have a viral quality to them. You eat more, they eat more. You stop smoking, they are more likely to quit. Happiness is similarly contagious.


This image shows the Framingham social network, mapping the people of Framingham, Mass. in 2000.

Blue = sad
Yellow = happy
Green = shades in between

A quick look makes clear that sadness (blue nodes) and happiness (yellow) tend to cluster and spread together.

And the technology that powers online social networks does not change the basic dynamics common to all social networks.

It turns out that Facebook operates like most other social networks. It transmits the happiness virus just as well.

Just knowing that makes me happy.

This is Your Brain on Twitter (vs. Facebook)

The science of social media is starting to attract attention.

At least one scientist is investigating the effects on working memory of using Facebook vs. Twitter.

His conclusion (oversimplified) is: Facebook makes you smarter. Twitter makes you dumber.

More specifically, Twitter requires less mental processing and fewer synapses firing. And reduces attention span ... as if people these days didn't already suffer enough from this problem.

MySpace … the Next AOL?

MySpace is looking like the first AOL of the 21st Century. And not in a good way.

TechCrunch noted that Twitter has overtaken MySpace in traffic in the UK. That day is surely nearing in the US and globally.

The question: Is an AOL-like decline inevitable for MySpace?






One data point suggests that MySpace’s downturn is not only relative.

Daily pageviews per user has dropped by 50% for MySpace over the past 2 years.

It is steadily losing the competition for eyeballs.


Obviously, the rise of both Facebook and Twitter has been at the expense of MySpace, still the second largest social network in the world.

But MySpace is heavily dependent on US users and traffic.

Facebook has successfully broadened beyond the US, which now accounts for only 31% of Facebook’s user base. Twitter draws 59% of its traffic from outside the US.

For MySpace, 65% of its users still come from the US. And it’s been around for years. That is a recipe for stagnation.

Twitter and Facebook have room to grow, as uptake rises in other countries.

Unless MySpace identifies some new, compelling services or finds a way to grow its brand globally, it looks like a contender for the next AOL.

News Flash: Social Media News Acquisition

NowPublic, a social media news website, has been acquired by the Examiner.com, a local news network controlled by the Clarity Media Group (Philip Anschutz’s outfit).

The reported price tag: $25 million.

Apparently, citizen journalism sparks interest (and dollars) from Big Media.

And consolidation may help find a sustainable formula that balances coverage (NowPublic claims citizen reporters in over 100 countries) with operational efficiencies of scale.

Woofer: Antidote to Twitter, or More of the Same?

With a 1,400-character minimum, Woofer in theory offers salvation from our growing Twitter-dom. Or Twitter-dumb.

The three principles of woofing: 1. Be eloquent. 2. Use adverbs. 3. DEA (don't ever abbreviate).

Noble statements.

Encouraging a person to think, compose and express. Macroblogging over microblogging. The anti-Twitter.

Not so fast. In reality, Woofer seems to merely encourage more idiocy and verbal spam.

Hence, a “woof” ten minutes ago that reads:

I am Awesome. I am [Name Deleted]! Hear Me Type! Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis …

When people have nothing to say, why can’t they just say nothing?

Yahoo Grabs Big Piece of Middle East Internet Market

Eventually, global Internet companies would realize the Arab world is one of the last underdeveloped frontiers for digital media. That day was yesterday. Yahoo bought Maktoob.com, the largest Arabic online portal, for an undisclosed sum, reportedly around $100 million.

This is a big deal. Even Twitter is a buzz with the news.

The Arabic speaking world of Internet users has not been completely ignored. Google opened it first office in the Arab world in 2006, and is the top search engine among Arabic users. Already 8% of Facebook's user base is in the Arab world. Yahoo is not the first major equity investment in a portal in the Arab world (or even a portal based in Jordan). Intel Capital recently invested in Jeeran, a Jordanian based social network with 1 million members. And that was Intel’s seventh investment in Middle East digital media. Last year, Vodafone Egypt bought Sarmady Communications (Sarcom), a digital content company based in Egypt.

But with this deal, Yahoo landed the biggest digital media acquisition to date in the Middle East. Yahoo calls it their biggest geographic expansion in years. I call it a very smart move. Maktoob has been the #1 Arabic website (in terms of users) for years, steadily growing organically and through a series of regional acquisitions. Its acquisition was inevitable. The only surprise is that it took so long. Maktoob has been around for almost 10 years.

320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, but only 1 per cent of all online content is in Arabic. That math adds up to outsized growth as the online advertising market catches up with the rapid rise in Internet penetration and usage in the Arab world. This deal alone may drive increased online advertising in the Middle East, as well as accelerate the shift away from newspapers and print advertising.

So Maktoob becomes Yahoo Maktoob at the price of $6 per user ($100 million for 16.5 million users). Although Middle East entrepreneurs will envy the valuation and the newly minted millionaires among them, that price will look dirt cheap one day. And that day is today.

Twitter Babble

I have nothing against Twitter. I have an account, rarely used and never tweeted. Mostly because I have neither the patience nor the interest for useless chatter, and Twitter is full it.

Don’t take my word for it. A new study looked at a large, random sample of tweets and found – surprise! – nearly half of all public tweets (40.5%) are empty babble.

Most tweets were not shameless self-promotion (think Ashton Kutcher), just pointless drivel. Think tweets like “I am scratching my ass right now.” Pure noise. Twitter spam.

Yes, Twitter proved invaluable to Iranian protestors risking life and liberty to protest recent elections. But “news” came in last place among categories counted, less than 4% of all tweets.

So who is projecting all this mindless crap? Twitter reaches 27 million people per month in the U.S., so the answer is easy …Tweets like us.

Blogging is Sex, Not Masturbation

Blogging, like unsafe sex and political protest, is risky behavior.



According to a new UK study, bloggers are taking big risks by posting derogatory comments and damaging details about their firms, bosses and colleagues. One-third of all bloggers risk losing their jobs over their blogging activities.

I have posted before about the risks to bloggers of being political scapegoats or the target of legal retaliation.

This is different. Blogging is like unprotected sex. It feels like masturbation, but it is unsafe sex with a world of unknown partners.



Or to use another metaphor, this is about self-immolation.



Sitting alone in your office or home, it is easy to forget that blogging is a public activity. It feels private and informal, like writing a diary that nobody reads. It isn't. Blogs, for the most part, are public property, a web-based diary accessible to the world.

Would you go around your office hanging signs on the walls with critical comments of your boss? No? Then take care. Blogging is basically the same thing.

If you want to make a statement, make it. But understand it is for public consumption.

Categories: blogging

Digg in the Crossfire

Digg.com is caught in a crossfire -- facilitate piracy or censor content provided by its users.



Digg--a user-prioritized news site--deleted stories featuring code for cracking copyrighted DVDs, as demanded by the AACS Licensing Authority, an entertainment industry consortium. Digg users rebelled, and overloaded its website with postings. Digg backed down, allowed re-posting of the stories, and now faces a possible lawsuit (and court-ordered closure).

Truly the definition of "between a rock and a hard place." Internet users ( = Digg customers) verses copyright holders.

Who do you side with?

Either side could close down your business.

Censor articles posted by users and watch them crash your website, or side with their wish to share stories that expose intellectual property and risk closure by lawsuit.

What does this fight show? For one thing, intellectual property rules created for industrial societies do not work for a networked world.

Categories: piracy, copyright, Digg

YouTube Can Live Without Big Media

The legal battle between YouTube and Big Media just received an interesting piece of evidence: videos with copyrighted content (like Daily Show clips) do not dominate YouTube viewership. This is not good news for Viacom and other Big Media companies suing Google to prevent posting of copyrighted video on YouTube.

Big Media's copyrighted videos that were removed by YouTube comprised 9 percent of all videos on the site. And, surprisingly, those videos represent only 6 percent of total views. Yes, some copyrighted content surely remains on YouTube with less obvious tags making them more difficult for copyright holders to identify and demand removal. So those numbers are a bit higher in reality. But likely not orders of magnitude higher. If clips are under the radar of copyright owners, they are probably under the radar of YouTube users as well, not making any most viewed lists or generating many hits.

Even if copyrighted videos are 12 percent of total views, the vast majority of YouTube users are not watching Big Media content. This may not slow Viacom's lawsuit against Google, as one Wired News commentator said, but it may slow Google's willingness or need to settle. Google could remove all Viacom's content and go on its merry way, still enjoying robust and growing usership. It has past its tipping point.

In fact, stripped of Big Media content, YouTube's business model and usage might evolve even more rapidly. Instead of becoming the iTunes of Big Media video clips, who knows what YouTube could morph into? Or it may lead artists to re-think deals with Big Media companies that blocks their content from reaching the mass audiences on online social networks like YouTube.

Categories: media, YouTube

Blogging Gets a Presidential Endorsement

If the mark of a credible news source is the importance of the people who cite it, blogging just got a big endorsement -- from President Bush. In a speech on Wednesday, Bush cited a pair of Iraqi bloggers to support his argument that the US military surge in Iraq is making progress.

The bloggers are two Iraqi dentists who write an English-language blog, IraqTheModel.com. These bloggers, who have met President Bush in the Oval Office, are generally supportive of the US efforts in Iraq. But neither that nor your opinion on the Iraq (civil) war, diminishes the import of this. The President of the United States has cited a blog as a news source.

While some governments use bloggers as scapegoats, blogging has reached the top of the political mountain in the US.

Categories: blogging

Problems? Blame the Blogs

That is what the Malaysian government is doing apparently. Malaysia's Information Minister has warned newspapers (and by extension citizens) against using blogs as sources of information. According to the Star newspaper, Minister Zainuddin Maidin described blogs as "anarchist websites" and said most websites are run by frustrated journalists and political pundits.

Governments, companies and politicians worldwide are having difficulty adjusting to our wired world. The Internet disintermediates government and others who have traditionally filtered or rationed information. News oligopolies have ended.

Today, individuals can easily and instantaneously project their ideas, opinions and reporting out to the world. It can be a painful experience, as the Malaysian government discovered when allegations of corruption appeared in blogs and were later picked up by mainstream media.

Instant, unfiltered access to information is good. Yet, people still have a responsibility to assess (and question) the credibility of sources -- whether they are blogs or government-controlled media.

It's hard to lose control, and easy to scapegoat bloggers, as I noted here in connection with a company targeting a widely read blog.

As with most things, however, the fault lies not in our blogs but in ourselves.


Categories: Malaysia, blogging

Outing Groklaw & Open Source Bloggers

Anonymous blogging is becoming a risky proposition. And if you blog about legal issues related to open source, be prepared for real trouble. As part of its court case attacking Linux vendors and users, SCO has subpeonaed Groklaw blogger Pamela Jones, a frequent commentator on the SCO lawsuit. SCO intends to force Jones to sit for a deposition. Why? They claim Jones is somehow associated with IBM, or might even be one of its lawyers.

Even if true, what will SCO gain, other than the embarrassment of outing an online commentator or exposing how advocates use the Internet to project their views to the world? Groklaw posts about the SCO case are mainly commentary based upon court documents and filings. So SCO is basically harassing a blogger for her widely-read opinions (protected by the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution). Sounds like a cheap shot, and a move almost guaranteed to create a storm of bad press for SCO. And they would deserve it.

It is unclear what relevant evidence Jones (whoever she is) would have for the lawsuit and SCO. If she was a lawyer for IBM, any information beyond the blog posts would be protected by attorney-client privilege. If she is a paid mouthpiece for IBM or associated with it in some other way, nothing indicates that she has any information beyond what is publicly available in court documents. In the end, this looks like SCO attacking a person for her support for open source.

Allowing this subpeona of a blogger would set a dangerous precedent and send a chilling signal to anyone who posts online. Intimidation and reprisals should not be part of the blogging experience.


Categories: opensource, SCO, IBM, blogging